In praise of Meade

Lately, it seems almost fashionable to find fault with Meade. With this in
mind, I hereby offer some positive feelings and interactions with the
company.

1. For much less than a thousand dollars they furnished me with a fine 12.5
inch dobsonian. Sure, there is room for much improvement on the instrument,
but the optics are great and the mount is stable enough. I'm not alone in
my belief that the Meade 12.5 inch Starfinder Dobsonian represents the most
"bang for the buck" on the market.

2. When I phoned them to complain about what I perceived to be a faulty
eyepiece which came with the scope, they sent a replacement at no charge
with a note attached asking me to return the faulty one at my convenience.
How many companies would take that risk?

3. The Magellan 1 DSCs I purchased are held to the altitude bearing by way
of a small #4-40 set screw. This tiny screw is tightened by a .05 inch
allen wrench which will eventually round off the very small edges to the
hole in the set screw in which the diminutive wrench is inserted. I phoned
Meade to ask if more could be purchased from them. A few days later, I
received a small envelope containing several at no charge. This gave me
time to locate a complete hardware store locally where I bought a lifetime
supply for under three dollars.

4. When I accidently stripped the threads to the specially designed nut
which secures the bottom end of the azimuth encoder of Magellan 1 to the
ground plate of the mount, they sent me a new one for free. . .this after
the warranty had expired.

5. Having trouble figuring the correct secondary offset, I phoned them
again. A couple of weeks later a letter arrived from Meade with the precise
amount of offset to apply.

It could be that they have changed this helpful policy which was extended
towards me. It could be that those who knock Meade are a vocal minority of
unhappy customers who exist amongst a highly satisifed majority. Me? I
couldn't be more content with my Meade product and their support service.

Am I alone?


Martin

Yep, but there is also the issue of best bang for the buck isn't always
what's best for an individual. For example, if the best bang for the buck
on peanut butter is a 2 gallon tub, but you wind up only eating 1 pint of
it, then even technically it's a good value, it's not necessarily a good
value to you. Same with telescopes - if you buy something that is a great
value, but you wind up never using it, then it's not as good a value as
something that does not have as good a bang for buck ratio, but gets used
very often.
Course if you are the type that eats 2 gallons of peanut butter before it
spoils then yes, it would be a good value to you.

Starstuffed wrote:
: Lately, it seems almost fashionable to find fault with Meade. With this in

: mind, I hereby offer some positive feelings and interactions with the
: company.

Starstuffed wrote in message:
snip
It could be that those who knock Meade are a vocal minority of
unhappy customers who exist amongst a highly satisifed majority. Me? I
couldn't be more content with my Meade product and their support service.

Am I alone?

Dear Martin,

No, you are not alone. I am also a very satisfied Meade customer. Sure,
I've had a few minor difficulties with the two new SCT's I've gotten from
them in the past couple of years, but all problems were easily worked out
with help from their customer service staff. I received a LX200GPS handbox
in replacement exactly as you did with the eyepiece. I agree with you
wholeheartedly about the 'noisemakers'...of course, it could be the folks
that receive 'bad service' (at least according to them) are somewhat less
than polite when they contact a customer service rep.

Dave

Well, I'm glad you two did find Meade to be a responsible company. I, on
the other hand, found them unresponsive to my inquiries, arrogant, and they
don't test what they develop in house. For the most part, the things you
bought were not of this nature, so you avoided the worst.
--
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Pinprick holes in a colorless sky
Let inspired figures of light pass by
The Mightly Light of ten thousand suns
Challenges infinity, and is soon gone




"Dave Jessie" wrote in message
...
Starstuffed wrote in message:
snip
It could be that those who knock Meade are a vocal minority of
unhappy customers who exist amongst a highly satisifed majority. Me? I
couldn't be more content with my Meade product and their support
service.

Am I alone?

Dear Martin,

No, you are not alone. I am also a very satisfied Meade customer. Sure,
I've had a few minor difficulties with the two new SCT's I've gotten from
them in the past couple of years, but all problems were easily worked out
with help from their customer service staff. I received a LX200GPS
handbox
in replacement exactly as you did with the eyepiece. I agree with you
wholeheartedly about the 'noisemakers'...of course, it could be the folks
that receive 'bad service' (at least according to them) are somewhat less
than polite when they contact a customer service rep.

Dave

minority of
unhappy customers who exist amongst a highly satisifed majority. Me? I
couldn't be more content with my Meade product and their support service.

Am I alone?

Hi:

Not at all. I've got their 12.5" dob too, and have just loved it. It was
eventually converted into a truss tube that preserved only the original optics,
but the reason for that was that I no longer had a vehicle that would
accomodate the Big Dog. With a little fine tuning, I did a lot of good work
with it in its original form. And I'm using 8 LX10s with my college astronomy
students, and have been very pleased with these "bargain" scopes over the last
5 years.

Anytime I've had a problem, Meade has been responsive.

Peace,
Rod Mollise
Author of _Choosing and Using a Schmidt Cassegrain Telescope_
Like SCTs and MCTs?
Check-out sct-user, the mailing list for CAT fanciers!
Goto http://members.aol.com/RMOLLISE/index.html

"Starstuffed" wrote in message
nk.net...
Lately, it seems almost fashionable to find fault with Meade. With this
in
mind, I hereby offer some positive feelings and interactions with the
company.

1. For much less than a thousand dollars they furnished me with a fine
12.5
inch dobsonian. Sure, there is room for much improvement on the
instrument,
but the optics are great and the mount is stable enough. I'm not alone in
my belief that the Meade 12.5 inch Starfinder Dobsonian represents the
most
"bang for the buck" on the market.

True enough. The optics are ok. Sometimes they're even good. I think my 10"
had good optics.
The rest of the scope was terribly disappointing (it was an eqatorial newt).
Mostly, my dissatisfaction was rooted in their design issues. Those straps
to hold the tube...almost put my eye out. No provision to level the mount,
or accurately polar align it. They make excellent candidates for conversion
to truss dobs, and will serve wonderfully in that capacity for a hundred
years.

In fairness to any of the major mfgrs, we'll always hear more about the
scopes that got sent back than we'll hear about the ones that *didn't* get
sent back. Or the UPS shipment, or the ebay transaction, or the xx.xx.x.

Cleah skoys, as they say in Philly.
Etok



__________________________________________________ ____________________
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For visual use, which is what these scopes are for, you don't need to be
accurately polar aligned or leveled.
--
Curtis Croulet
Temecula, California
33° 27'59"N, 117° 05' 53"W

OMG Rod has a DOB????? The Horror of it! ;-)

Sorry I had to say that.....

Dave


On 22 Sep 2003 22:06:15 GMT, (Rod Mollise) wrote:

minority of
unhappy customers who exist amongst a highly satisifed majority. Me? I
couldn't be more content with my Meade product and their support service.

Am I alone?

Hi:

Not at all. I've got their 12.5" dob too, and have just loved it. It was
eventually converted into a truss tube that preserved only the original optics,
but the reason for that was that I no longer had a vehicle that would
accomodate the Big Dog. With a little fine tuning, I did a lot of good work
with it in its original form. And I'm using 8 LX10s with my college astronomy
students, and have been very pleased with these "bargain" scopes over the last
5 years.

Anytime I've had a problem, Meade has been responsive.

Peace,
Rod Mollise
Author of _Choosing and Using a Schmidt Cassegrain Telescope_
Like SCTs and MCTs?
Check-out sct-user, the mailing list for CAT fanciers!
Goto http://members.aol.com/RMOLLISE/index.html

"Curtis Croulet" wrote in message
...
For visual use, which is what these scopes are for, you don't need to be
accurately polar aligned or leveled.
--
Curtis Croulet
Temecula, California
33° 27'59"N, 117° 05' 53"W

This scope (as I mis-spelled in my origial post) was an equatorially mounted
scope. I didn't see a disclaimer in the ad saying "for visual use only".

Regards,
Etok




__________________________________________________ ____________________
Posted Via Uncensored-News.Com - FAST UNLIMITED DOWNLOAD - http://www.uncensored-news.com
The Worlds Uncensored News Source

This scope (as I mis-spelled in my origial post) was an equatorially mounted
scope. I didn't see a disclaimer in the ad saying "for visual use only".

It's self-evident from the size of the mount shafts and lack of amenities such
as a polar alignment scope and leveling bubbles that this scope is expected to
be used mainly for visual use, *especially* when the selling price is taken into
account. The ad writer probably assumed that the buyer would have some minimal
intelligence and astronomical knowledge, and that he wouldn't have to have every
possible use and limitation spelled out. These equatorial Meades were the
functional descendents of the Caves, Starliners and Criterions of yore, none of
which were expected to be used for serious astrophotography, at least not when
used with the delivered mounts.
--
Curtis Croulet
Temecula, California
33° 27'59"N, 117° 05' 53"W